"If the truth gives pain, it is not the fault of the teacher, nor of the reader who hears it for the first time, but of error, which stabs and stings before it will surrender its victim." M.M. Mangasarian

Millions of students will graduate in China this year, but with up to a third unable to get a job the number of suicides is soaring.

By David Eimer in Hebei Province

Tens of thousands of job seekers line up at a job fair in Chengdu, southwestern China's Sichuan province

Chinese student Liu Wei who, consumed with guilt about her parents' financial sacrifices, took her own life

Chinese student Liu Wei who, consumed with guilt about her parents' financial sacrifices, took her own life

July was supposed to have marked the start of Liu Wei's new life.

With more than six million other students across China, the 21-year-old was due to graduate from college this month.

For Miss Liu, the daughter of poor farmers, a degree was to be her passport out of a life of poverty, a way to escape working in the fields, or toiling as a humble migrant worker in a far-off factory in southern China.

But her dream of making the huge leap from farm girl to college graduate will never become reality. Deeply depressed and ashamed about her failure to find a job to take up when she graduated, and consumed with guilt about the financial sacrifices her family had made for her, Miss Liu brought her studies and her life to a premature end by drowning herself in a ditch full of freezing, filthy water.